Parenting with automatic weights
The meta rig is only used to place the bones in the right place. The mesh is eventually bound to the armature of the generated rig.
Do not apply the modifiers. You want to keep your mesh low-poly for performance and easy modifications.
You have already &quot;parented&quot; the body base mesh to the meta rig and created a pose to match the shape of the armor. Basically moved the hands in this pose. That's the reason why the hands are not in place.
All parts of the body, the armor, and the rig must have the same Rest Pose. This is not the case with your rig.
Corrections:

select the body base mesh (&quot;lowman_shoes&quot;) and apply the Armature modifier. This will change the position of the hands in the A pose permanently.
select the metarig and apply All Transformations to the it (Ctrl+A), else the generated rig is placed at the wrong position.
switch to Pose mode and make the current pose the new Rest Pose (menu: Pose &gt; Apply &gt; Apply Pose as Rest Pose
in Edit mode, rotate the shin and thigh bones a tiny, little bit in direction of the knee. This is needed for the IK mechanics so it knows where the knees should bend.

Now everything is in place and you can generate the rig.

In Object mode, go to the Armature Properties and press the Generate Rig button
hide the metarig, the Environment collection, and the Curve guide for the &quot;hair&quot;.
select everything else (body and the thousand parts of the armor)
make sure the rig is highlighted in orange (active object, selected last) and make it a parent for the selection (Ctrl+P, With Automatic Weights). This takes a moment or two ...
go to Pose mode and check it out

The weight painting will not be perfect, some parts (bracers) will not move and shoulder plates will deform, etc. This is because your armor has so many parts. In this case, you can duplicate everything, and create a &quot;statue&quot; version. Use this version to generate the Automatic Weights and transfer them back with a Transfer Data modifier.
The fingers might bend in the wrong direction (scale them S/Alt+S). It's because Rigify tries to guess the pivot points and gets confused you have to move around the fingers of the metarig a lot. But you can fix it with some settings. (Just checked it for your model. It looks ok, except for the deformation and the thumb.)